Tag #125586 - Interview #77980 (Sami Fiul)

We, the kids, didn't go to cheder, but we had a lehrer, or a melamed, who came to our house to teach us how to read. I remember we ran from him sometimes, but I don't know why. But education had no pedagogical features back then: for example, we learnt how to read, but we had no idea what we were reading from the prayer book; I think it would have been normal, for a kid, to have some pictures near the text, a translation, something to incite him. Poor lehrer Moise, that was his name, was a kind man, and warm-hearted, he would have liked to teach us more, but we didn't want to learn. When he found us playing together, he would start teaching each of us separately. When we climbed in a tree, he came looking for us. We had a garden near our house, and we climbed in the one of the trees there, and giggled as softly as we could, so that he wouldn't hear us. One time I remember we hid in straws, around the household; and he came looking for us, and even stepped on us - that is on the straws that covered us, but we didn't say a word, we were that desperate to get away from the lesson. Another funny memory is from my first grade, when we had a vaccine shot. It had a crust that itched, and we weren't allowed to scratch it. So poor lehrer Moise had a rush straw with him, and he tickled the crust, he was that kind, he did everything so that we would read. Of course he got tired after a while, and when he stopped, we stopped reading as well! He started tickling us, we started reading, and that was the way the lesson was held! I suppose that's also the reason why we didn't learn much.